Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/155

 Rh sore, when a deformed little old man appeared, and, asking why she sorrowed, gave her a pair of gloves wherewith she could spin gold, saying that he would return the next night and claim her as his wife if she could not tell his name. Despair made her consent, and forthwith she began to spin the stuff into gold. But although there was joy throughout the palace at this, there was grief in the maiden's heart, and this the prince sought to drive away when he came back from the chase in the evening, telling her how he had seen a little old man dancing round a bush, and singing this song:

The maiden's gloom was now turned to gladness; and at night, when the hunchback came, she sprang up, saying, "Titteli Ture! Titteli Ture! here are your gloves." Upon this the dwarf, furiously angry, leapt through the air, taking with him the roof of the house.

In the variant from German Hungary, a woodcutter is in such dire straits for food that he takes his daughter to the forest, promising, like the uncle in our classical "Babes in the Wood," to return to her soon. The child wandered flower-gathering, till, wearied, she fell asleep; and on waking, finding herself alone, she wept bitterly, and ran hither and thither in search of her father. Then there appeared a dwarf, clad in grey, at sight of whom she was affrighted, but he so coaxed away her fears that she agreed to live with him as his daughter in the hollow of a great tree. One day the mannikin told her that he had recommended her to the queen as a waiting-maid; and soon after this the queen's son came home from the wars and fell in love with her. When the dwarf heard this, he said that the king must find out his name before he would consent to the wedding; and, returning to his tree-dwelling, lit his fire, and skipping round it, sang: